New Creations

by Sandra Bounds

Southern women once wore
disguises and hid behind masks
imposed upon us by those
around us, even by
those we love.

We have led lives
randomly assembled
from expectations of others,
but now
we have learned to be authentic,
to recreate our lives,
to shape and mold ourselves
from within.

Sandra Bounds was born in Mississippi and lives in Macon. She has a Master of Arts in English and has taught in both high school and community college. An active member of the Mississippi Poetry Society, she was its 2005 Poet of the Year, and the society published a chapbook of her poetry to honor that selection. She has won many awards in contests sponsored by the society and has been published in such journals as Art Gulf Coast, The Lyric, The Road Not Taken, Sharing, The Well-Tempered Sonnet and Westward Quarterly. Read her former poems published in Deep South here.